Our individuality is something we must really invent

What you call discovering a soul can only be done by inventing; our individuality is something we must really invent.

“Yea, into the evil” cried the youth. “How is it possible that thou hast discovered my soul?”Zarathustra smiled and said: “Many a soul one will never discover, unless one first invent it.”

Nietzsche, Zarathustra, Chapter “Reading and Writing”

“Nietzsche was always identified with other people, with his father for instance, and he did not invent his own individuality. The word invent means to enter. So to invent a new form of life did mean to come into a new kind of life. And it is as if that new kind of life did not exist in itself, as least not for you; it is utterly strange, a life you don’t know and apparently do not contact. It is so far away that you have to find it, invenire, to invent it; you have to go into it in order to know it.

This idea is also expressed in the initiations by the idea of the quest, a sort of voyage of exploration or invention; you seek in order to find that new thing. It may be the quest of a knight errant who seeks the Holy Sepulchre or the Holy Grail, or who seeks dangers in order to develop his courage; or it may mean seeking the hidden treasure, or how to make gold.

All these different metaphors mean the same thing, namely, the way of invention, the way of finding, and that finding consists in inventing the thing which has apparently not yet been.

But the very word, to invent, means to go into it; when you invent a thing you literally go into something which already does exist though not yet visible. It is as if you were going into a house which you have not seen before, and so you conclude that you invented it, but it was there long before you were born – you simply happened to find it.”